Jennifer and Kevin McCoy's "Airworld"

Author

Walker Art Center Calendar

Date

September 1999

Institution

Walker Art Center

This "site" is a series of banner ads that appears on real sites across the Web alongside Intel processor and Absolut Vodka ads, courtesy of Doubleclick. Each of the ads includes guru-sounding/gurulike aphorisms, such as "are you lost? reorganize," "option: business as usual," "reorganize domain," or "trial agent." When you click on the ad, you are whisked to the corporate homepage of Airworld, where the same confusion continues. A "jargon machine" dynamically pulls text blurbs from business and technology Web sites, evoking the traditional hierarchy of a corporate site with its categories such as Alliances, Solutions, Technology, Home Office, Recruitment, and Shopping. Felix Stalder's accompanying essay critiques the current development of net commerce.